Five Rhodes students have spent the past few months recording more than 50 locals as part of a project called Grahamstown Voices.
Five Rhodes students have spent the past few months recording more than 50 locals as part of a project called Grahamstown Voices.
Subjects included a counsellor, a street vendor, a bird watcher, a movie ticket-seller, a surfer, a nurse, an SPCA officer and many others who share one thing – they live in Grahamstown.
The students were Dipuo Sedibe, Nicola van Rensberg, Lynn Berggren, Phumzile Manana and Annetjie van Wynegaard, who undertook the project as the final-term "elective" of their journalism degree.
Project supervisor, radio producer Jayne Morgan, said, “Our aim was to reflect the diversity of the people of the city and, using just their voices, create tiny glimpses of their lives. "When you listen to someone speaking and all the non-verbal clutter is stripped away, you hear more than usual – and sometimes you ‘see’ more too.”
Each audio clip is less than two minutes and most subjects identify themselves. They range from well-known Grahamstown personalities, and people you might interact with daily but know nothing about, to people on our streets who are effectively 'invisible'.
“I asked the students to think hard about their four years here and come up with as many things that said ‘Grahamstown’ to them as they could,” said Morgan. “Their task was then to find people who reflected those different facets, interview them and create audio portraits. "
"The challenge was to get people to open up to the microphone. The result is an amazing aural journey around the city”.
Grahamstown Voices will be played on Radio Grahamstown during January and February. The interviews are also available online. To listen go to www.grocotts.co.za/ghtvoices, where you’ll also find some of the faces behind the voices.
